Barry Bonds, who could go down as the most notorious cheat in baseball’s long history of cheating, has moved within one rung of also being its most prolific home run hitter.
A wait of 13 days and 29 at-bats ended Saturday when Bonds drove a 1-1 pitch from Oakland Athletics left-hander Brad Halsey for the 714th home run of his career, tying fabled slugger Babe Ruth for second on the career list.
The homer came in the second inning of a game the San Francisco Giants would win 4-2 in 10 innings at Oakland’s McAfee Coliseum.
Bonds needs 41 homers to match Hank Aaron’s record total of 755.
In an interview afterward, Bonds did not address his chances to catch Aaron but would need to play until 2008 to do so if he continues to hit homers at this year’s pace.
Bonds, 41, recently described the attention he has received pursuing Ruth as “a little bit draining.” That’s primarily because he remains a focus of Major League Baseball’s internal investigation of steroid use as well as the target of federal prosecutors.
Bonds called it “a great relief” to match Ruth’s historic total, adding that the 714th home run would mean more to him than the 715th will.
“This is a great accomplishment because of Babe Ruth, what he brought to baseball,” Bonds said. “This and a World Series ring would be the ultimate. He changed the game. We’ve all had our chances to add our 2 cents [worth].”
In the lineup as a designated hitter in the interleague series, Bonds led off the second inning and was loudly booed by the crowd of 35,077. He quieted his detractors with the drive off Halsey, who became the 420th pitcher to be victimized by a Bonds home run.
After circling the bases, Bonds was greeted first by his son Nikolai, who was serving as a Giants batboy, and then his teammates. He tipped his cap and blew a kiss to his 7-year-old daughter Aisha. The crowd cheered and Bonds acknowledged the curtain call, stepping out of the dugout and raising his hands.
“I’m just glad it happened in the [San Francisco] Bay,” Bonds said. “East Bay, West Bay. It’s good. The fans in Oakland were phenomenal.”
Catching Aaron could be a formidable task for the declining Bonds, who labors to cover ground in left field and has homered only six times in 96 at-bats this season, an average of one every 16 at-bats.
Bonds finished Saturday’s game 1-for-3 with two walks, both intentional. He is batting .229 with 15 runs batted in and 42 walks in 36 games.
Bonds’ 713th home run was a monster shot into the upper deck at Philadelphia on May 7. He went home to San Francisco hoping to pass Ruth during seven games against Houston, the Cubs and Los Angeles but went 1-for-18 with eight walks on the homestand. He lost one homer when the Cubs’ Juan Pierre leaped at the 8-foot center-field wall to keep the ball in the park on May 10.
A federal grand jury is investigating whether Bonds was truthful when he told a 2003 grand jury that he never knowingly had used steroids. Bonds also faces possible charges of tax evasion resulting from the testimony of a spurned mistress who has cooperated with the prosecutors.
On another front, the book “Game of Shadows” by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams details the slugger’s alleged use of Winstrol, Deca-Durabolin and other banned performance-enhancing drugs.
Aaron, who played 23 years, broke Ruth’s record without ever hitting more than 47 homers in a season. Bonds, a highly gifted player with power and speed in his early years with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Giants, has won seven National League Most Valuable Player Awards, including three when his frame was still lean. He has hit more than 50 homers in a season only once.
He blasted 73 in 2001, breaking the single-season record that Mark McGwire had set only three years earlier. In “Game of Shadows,” Fainaru-Wada and Williams write that Bonds committed himself to an aggressive course of steroid use after becoming jealous of the adulation McGwire and Sammy Sosa received during their 1998 home run race.
Bonds remained at the top of his game the next three seasons, but his home run totals dropped to 46, 45 and 45 those years, largely because opposing managers ordered their pitchers to pitch around him. Bonds set a record with 198 walks in 2002 and broke it in 2004. He drew 232 walks that year, including 120 that were intentional.
He reached base more than half the time in 2001-04, including a record on-base percentage of .609 in ’04, when he hit .362 to win his second batting title.
Before 2003 MLB did not have a program to test players for steroids and still does not have a test to check for the use of Human Growth Hormone, which many players are suspected of using.
According to “Game of Shadows,” Bonds is believed to have used personal trainer Greg Anderson (who along with Victor Conte pleaded guilty in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative case) to acquire undetectable steroids for him after the MLB Players Association agreed to random testing.
He never has tested positive and told a grand jury that he believed Anderson was giving him flaxseed oil and an arthritic rub.
Health problems, most notably with his knees, have limited Bonds’ effectiveness in the last two seasons. He has played in only 39 of San Francisco’s last 193 games, including just 13 last season, when his career was threatened by a third surgery on his right knee and a subsequent infection.
Bonds is under contract to earn $18 million both this season and in 2007 but has been so discouraged by his injuries, as well as the cloud covering him since he was linked to the steroid distribution operation at the BALCO, that he has said he won’t decide until later this year whether he will continue playing beyond 2006.
Commissioner Bud Selig also may have a say. In the past Selig has said he did not have the proof to discipline Bonds (along with the New York Yankees’ Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, who also are linked to the BALCO scandal), but that could change with either a federal indictment or a finding by the steroids committee he has appointed.
Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell was named in March to lead the inquiry, which isn’t likely to complete its work before next winter.
Bonds was conspicuous by his absence when the House Reform Committee ordered McGwire, Sosa and other prominent players to a Washington hearing in March 2005.
Giambi and Sheffield, who also have been tied to BALCO, also were not invited to appear, most likely because federal prosecutors did not want to jeopardize their investigation.
Bonds has declined to answer any questions about steroids, limiting questioners to baseball topics. He talked for almost 20 minutes after hitting his 713th homer May 7 in Philadelphia and for a few minutes seemed to let down his guard.
He acknowledged that the frequent rehabilitation from injuries and the off-the-field issues had complicated his playing.
“It’s tough,” Bonds said. “It’s my job, and I’m going to do my job.”
Bonds said that he considered catching Ruth a bigger accomplishment than setting the single-season home run record.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “It’s a little bit larger than the single-season home run record. It’s big, really big.”
Passing Aaron would be even bigger.
“I always thought about Hank Aaron, always Hank Aaron, ever since Hank Aaron passed [Ruth],” Bonds said. “You pass someone, that makes you better.”
Bonds was asked if he would consider himself a better power hitter than Ruth once he had passed him.
“I don’t know yet,” Bonds said, almost smiling. “But the numbers speak for themselves.”
Milestone homers
A look at the victims of some of Barry Bonds’ biggest home runs:
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NO DATE PITCHER, OPP
1 6-4-86 Craig McMurtry, Atl
100 7-12-90 Andy Benes, SD
200 7-8-93 Jose DeLeon, Phi
300 4-30-96 John Burkett, Fla
400 8-23-98 Kirt Ojala, Fla
500 4-17-01 Terry Adams, LA
600 8-9-02 Kip Wells, Pit
700 9-17-04 Jake Peavy, SD
714 5-20-06 Brad Halsey, Oak
Make room for Barry
Seven hundred fourteen. Once, the greatest of all the great numbers in sports, held by the greatest slugger in baseball history, Babe Ruth. That was until Hank Aaron made it second-best in 1974 on his way to making a new number the greatest, 755. But Ruth has company now, in the form of San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds, who hit his 714th career home run on Saturday in Oakland.
Hank Aaron 755
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Seasons 23
At-bats 12,364
Runs 2,174
Hits 3,771
RBIs 2,297
Total bases 6,856
Walks 1,402
Strikeouts 1,383
Stolen bases 240
Batting average .305
Slugging pct. .555
HOME RUNS SEASON BY SEASON
`54-76; Best season . . . 47 in 1971
HR titles 4
50+ HR seasons 0
Solo HR 400
Grand slams 16
Multi HR games 62
AB per HR 16.38
HR per 162 games 37
Inside-the-park HR 1
Barry Bonds 714
Seasons 21
At-bats 9,236
Runs 2,100
Hits 2,764
RBIs 1,868
Total bases 5,632
Walks 2,353
Strikeouts 1,448
Stolen bases 506
Batting average .299
Slugging pct. .610
HOME RUNS SEASON BY SEASON
`86-’06; Best season . . . 73 in 2001
HR titles 2
50+ HR seasons 1
Solo HR 424
Grand slams 11
Multi HR games 68
AB per HR 12.94
HR per 162 games 42
Inside-the-park HR 3
Babe Ruth 714
Seasons 22
At-bats 8,399
Runs 2,174
Hits 2,873
RBIs 2,213
Total bases 5,793
Walks 2,062
Strikeouts 1,330
Stolen bases 123
Batting average .342
Slugging pct. .690
HR titles 12
50+ HR seasons 4
Solo HR 349
Grand slams 16
Multi HR games 72
AB per HR 11.76
HR per 162 games 46
Inside-the-park HR 10
HOME RUNS SEASON BY SEASON
`14-’35; Best season . . . 60 in 1927
Sources: Major League Baseball, STATS, San Francisco Giants.
Chicago Tribune / Steve Layton.
See microfilm for complete graphic.
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